Unexpected change in my Hebrew keyboard

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marciaprager
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Joined: 2015-11-15 19:37:17

Unexpected change in my Hebrew keyboard

Post by marciaprager »

I use the regular Hebrew Keyboard, not QUERTY. My typical font is New Peninim MT

Suddenly "option z" which used to give me the "fat" dash that links Hebrew words stopped giving me anything other than a regular "english" kind of dash.
I found the "fat" dash after much hunting, using "option\"
Any explanation here?


sample of the dash I want (though I can't get New Peninim MT to reproduce here it seems)
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exegete77
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Re: Unexpected change in my Hebrew keyboard

Post by exegete77 »

Is your font corrupted?
iMac 21.5” / MBP 13” Retina
Mac user since 1990
marciaprager
Posts: 4
Joined: 2015-11-15 19:37:17

Re: Unexpected change in my Hebrew keyboard

Post by marciaprager »

No the font is fine, everything is normal as faras I can tell, except that a few things on the keyboard under "option" are altered. When I go to "Show Keyboard Viewer" the keyboard shown matches the keyboard function on the actual keyboard, It is just different than it used to be. A few new symbols have shown up, and some keys produce different symbols or punctuation than had previously been the case. It is like a new keyboard configuration, without any warning or any change on my part.

All my documents open with the new incorrect dash, and I have to do a 'find/replace' toc hange them over. And this is the case on my computer and on two other diferent computers using Nisus Pro and this normally used font. The changes are there as well.

what gives?
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martin
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Re: Unexpected change in my Hebrew keyboard

Post by martin »

I observe the same behavior on my Mac: pressing Option + z using the Hebrew keyboard layout produces an En Dash character (U+2013). The same behavior occurs in other apps (eg: Apple's TextEdit) so I can only assume this is the intended behavior as set by the system.
All my documents open with the new incorrect dash, and I have to do a 'find/replace' toc hange them over
This is unexpected. Because Nisus Writer documents use Unicode to save your text, the characters should remain constant, no matter what font or version of OSX you are using. The active keyboard layout is definitely not a factor.

One theory: perhaps New Peninim previously incorrectly displayed the En Dash character (U+2013) as the Hebrew Maqaf dash (U+05BE). If Apple corrected that error in the font, it would explain the changed appearance of your old documents.

If you want to check the underlying Unicode characters of your text, select one or more characters and use the menu Edit > Convert > To Unicode Code Points. That will clarify which characters should be displayed on screen, regardless of the font.
marciaprager
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Re: Unexpected change in my Hebrew keyboard

Post by marciaprager »

The maqaf ⟨מַקָּף) ⟨־⟩ is the Hebrew hyphen ⟨-⟩ unicode U+05be.
It was always (for years) on my Hebrew keyboard, option z.
So yes, I see that for you too, you now (always?) locate it at option \
This is genuinely bizarre. I finished a huge document in September with maqaf hyphens abounding, and all were achieved with option z.
Now I have to go back and change them all. very distressing...
fortunately I made pdf's of all the pages.
But I am totally flummoxed.
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martin
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Re: Unexpected change in my Hebrew keyboard

Post by martin »

I'm glad you discovered another way to enter the Hebrew maqaf dash using the keyboard. I guess Apple must have changed its position for some reason.

That still doesn't explain why your existing documents now show a different dash character. Once you enter a character in your text it should always remain the same, by virtue of Unicode. That's true even if the keyboard layout changes. It's technically possible that the New Peninim font was changed to display a different glyph on screen, but that would be very poor behavior. I can only imagine the font creator doing such a thing if they wanted to correct an earlier error.

Well, I hope the task of fixing your documents isn't too difficult. Hopefully you can fix each document with a single Replace All.
marciaprager
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Re: Unexpected change in my Hebrew keyboard

Post by marciaprager »

thank you for taking your time on this. Everyone I know who is using this font with Nisus has reported the same problem.
But we will adjust.
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